WASHINGTON, D.C. June 20 (DPI) – Prolonging his fame, whistleblower Edward Snowden granted an interview this week to The Guardian, the UK media outlet that broke his story of widespread US surveillance activities.
But the broad reaction to Snowden’s latest remarks — that US surveillance extends to spying of other countries and “all spying is wrong” – suggests the 29-year-old former Booz Allen employee’s support is waning. Many are saying now the young techie comes across as a naif, and, according to CBS veteran Bob Schieffer, little more than a narcissist.
And based on the dwindling coverage of Snowden – only The Guardian among major news sites still makes index-page reference to him today — and increasingly critical comments in the press, more and more Americans are moving on.
In fact, a backlash is appearing: “The bottom line here is that I really don’t care if Ed Snowden thinks all spying is wrong and neither do most Americans,” wrote Rick Unger on Forbes.com this week. “This being the case, I have considerable difficulty with his decision to disclose the nation’s secrets to foreign governments just because he could.”
Unger adds: “Until I cast a vote for Edward Snowden to make such determinations for me, I would very much appreciate it if he would shut up and get over whatever psychological complexes are driving him to make these decisions on my behalf. He is doing neither me nor the country any favors.”
Still, much of the press has picked up an important theme that L’Affaire Snowden has revived: That the private sector, and particularly consultants like Snowden’s former employer, are so deeply embedded in US National Security that de-constructing or controlling a now-gargantuan national-security-industrial-complex looks difficult if not impossible.
The episode has shed new light on that veiled industry. It’s an area of the federal government that The Washington Post tackled two years ago in an exhaustively researched series of articles:
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/
As one poster put it: “The real revelation is the perma-commercialization of national security – Booz Allen, along with a lot of other “consultants”, has created a nice, untouchable industry for itself. The kid (Snowden) is an idiot for thinking the other issue — privacy in a world networked with China, Russia and Iran — is worth blowing the whistle about.”